It’s getting much harder to watch Flaco, the feral Eurasian Eagle-Owl that was released from the Central Park Zoo over three months ago. He’s not using the construction site as often, has gotten much quieter, and is less visible with the trees fully leafed out.
Luckily, I did get to see him for about twenty minutes on Sunday night.
Flaco continues to hunt the Brown Rats that surround three dumpsters at the compost heap. His situation doesn’t seem to be the idealized wild experience you read about on Twitter. He’s not living a wild life. He’s a feral bird just getting by in a city park.
Flaco, the escaped Eurasian Eagle-Owl has been moving around a bit these last few days. Not to far but further from the Loch. This is him on Saturday afternoon.
I missed seeing Flaco at his roost or at the construction site as I had a Zoom call until 8:30 pm. But I did get to see him at the Compost Heap. There was a construction crew working in the Compost Heap when we arrived and while Flaco tolerated them at first, he disappeared.
We thought he might have gone back to the construction site, and looked but we couldn’t find him. We saw the worker’s trucks when we were at the constructions site. Thinking that Flaco would return to the Compost Heap without workers being present, we when up to look for him. When we arrived he was in one of his favorite trees.
He moved around a bit, but fairly quickly caught a Brown Rat. He went to a hill and then a compost pile to eat it. He was in absolutely no rush to eat. In fact, he left a large amount uneaten.
Tonight makes three months since he was released from the zoo. It’s nice to see he’s surviving. But I do wish the Wildlife Conservation Society would capture him and relocate him to a safer place. One where he’s not hunting in a construction site or a a compost heap.
It will be three months on Tuesday, since a vandal released Flaco from his cage. Monday night, he explored the construction site before going to the compost heap, as he has been doing. I had him perched on the construction site dam for the first time but otherwise the evening was like many from the previous two weeks.
I arrived after fly out on Thursday night, to find Flaco in the construction site for the new rink/pool. He was on a few walls and we could find him about a third of the time. We didn’t see him for about twenty minutes, and he then started hooting, changing trees and finally going to hunt up at the compost heap.
He was on a concrete pipe a few times, on the ground, perched on a rock and on the small excavator, on a dumpster and a few trees. It was a nice variety of perches and made for an enjoyable evening.
